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Talkman accepts verbal input via a headset microphone. Speak some words in one language and the software instantly translates them into the specified language of your choosing. The game lets you select from different situations and nine languages. A bird character called Max interacts with you as you play.

SCE refers to Talkman not as productivity software, but as an application that's filled with entertainment value. The game's producer at Sony Computer Entertainment R&amp;D 2 commented, "This is software that makes conversing with people throughout the world possible. However, the PSP is a game machine, so making a plain translation program wouldn't be interesting. So, we decided to make a translation program that's filled with entertainment value."

At the conference, SCE demonstrated Talkman's "Hotel" situation with translation to English. When Japanese words were spoken into the microphone, Max held up a Japanese flag. Once the phrase was finished, the game managed to display a textual version of what had been said. Following this, Max displayed an American flag as he spoke the equivalent English phrase.

Outside of pure translations, Talkman lets players play games to test their fluency of a language. One game asks players to read text and gives them a rating based off their pronunciation.

It remains to be seen just how robust the translation and voice recognition aspects of Talkman are.
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A few days ago Nintendo filed 3 Patents for Pictochat, at first Pictochat was believed to be a basic chatting program but now as the DS launch dates creeps up it looks like they've added some new features. I'm posting the patents in it entirety so you can reference them as much as you like.